After Suzanne left the room, Michael checked the clock and was shocked to realize that it was almost 5:30. His stomach gave a ferocious growl moments later, signalling that it didn't agree with him skipping lunch. He took a few deep breaths to insure he wouldn't spontaneously burst into tears once he left the room, and then walked down the stairs.
Suzanne was stirring a pot of something at the stove when Michael arrived at the kitchen, and when she heard him enter the room, she turned to look at him.
"Are you okay?" She asked, concern filling her eyes. "I mean...about being here for the summer? Because I know my niece, and she makes rash decisions sometimes. Did your mother even ask you if you wanted to come here?" Suzanne began ladling some sort of soup from the pot into two bowls.
"Yeah," Michael lied, taking a seat at the table. "Don't worry."
He didn't tell her the truth because he didn't want to cause a fuss. He was fine with being as far away from his parents as possible, and he was pretty sure that they were fine with it too. Besides, Suzanne was right; his mother did things like that all the time, so it wasn't like it was a shock.
Suddenly, the phone rang and Suzanne placed a bowl of steaming soup in front of Michael before hurrying to grab the phone off of its hook and hold it to her ear.
"Hello?" There was a moment of silence during which all Michael could hear was the muffled and garbled sound of the person on the other end before Suzanne continued. "Oh, hello...yes, he's here...oh, he was?...oh, well I'm sorry, I didn't know...yep...okay, just a minute," Suzanne made a move to hand the phone to Michael, mouthing "it's your mother." Bit Michael shook his head vigorously. He was in no mood to talk to her. Suzanne passed him the phone anyway, and Michael sighed before answering. "Hello?"
"Michael, you were supposed to call me as soon as you landed yesterday," Mrs. Clifford immediately began to scold. "Your father and I were very worried!"
Michael vaguely remembered his mother asking him to do something like this, but he didn't regret forgetting to call. "No you weren't."
"What?"
"You weren't worried. If you were worried you would have called yesterday to check on me."
There was a pause, and then Mrs. Clifford fired right back up again. "I was busy. I didn't have time to call yesterday."
Michael gave a stony laugh. "Yeah, right. As if you even give a shit about me. Admit it, mom: You're just looking for an excuse to chastise me so you can get your anger out. You won't admit the real reason you're angry with me: you think it's my fault Grace is dead."
Michael hadn't realized how loud he was talking until the deafening silence descended upon him. The only sounds were Mrs. Clifford's barely audible breathing on the other end and the soft tapping of Suzanne's spoon as she stirred the soup and pretended she wasn't listening.
"Michael..." his mother finally spoke. "This is a very hard time for me-"
"And you think it's not a hard time for me?" Michael interrupted, anger boiling his veins. "Grace was my sister! I loved her, believe it or not! And guess what, mom? You're right. It's all my fault she's dead!"
Before his mother could respond, Michael furiously jabbed the red button to end the call and slammed the phone down onto the table.
He put his clenched fists, face up, on both sides of his soup bowl and stared at his white knuckles. He felt his fingernails dig into his skin and he unclenched his hands, seeing the half moon shaped welts they had left there. Those marks brought him back to the hospital room on that terrible day.
Grace is dead.
"Do you really think that?" Suzanne's voice put an end to the agonizing silence.
"Think what?" It came out more defensively than Michael would have liked. Suzanne hadn't done anything wrong.
"Do you really think that it was your fault that Grace..."
"Grace died," Michael clenched his jaw. He was so sick of everyone pussyfooting around the word. "Please just say it."
"You don't really think it was your fault, do you?" It sounded like Suzanne already knew the answer to her question.
Michael clenched his fists again, watching the tendons in his wrists tighten.
"Michael..." He heard her take a deep breath, choosing her words carefully. "It's easy to blame yourself. It's easy to blame others too. The point is, it's really easy to place blame."
Michael unclenched his fists again, examining every line on his palms. He flipped his hands over and examined the back of them too. He had always thought the saying, "I know it like the back of my hand," was very strange. He didn't know the back of his hand well at all.
"It wasn't your fault, Michael," Suzanne continued. "Although you may regret some choices you made that day, you didn't cause the accident." There was a short silence, and then Suzanne added: "And I also know that everything happens for a reason."
There were so many things that Michael wanted to yell at Suzanne after she spoke those words, but he bit his tongue. He rested his head in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut so the darkness completely overwhelmed him. He didn't know how long his eyes were closed, but when he opened them and looked up, Suzanne had left the room.
Wow this chapter was kind of depressing. Well, this whole book is kind of depressing to be honest.
Loser_Luke/Milo
